Elephant-man in the living room

I don't know if anyone, or anything, could have saved Micheal Jackson. But the willingness of millions of people to lie to themselves and each other about the glaring, obvious dysfunction is exactly the kind of "elephant in the living room" thinking that affects our health, relationships, racial relations, educational system and more. My plea is to ask yourself where do you have a Micheal in your life--your behaviors, or those of people close to you. What won't you look at, for fear of losing love? Fear of being rejected from your core group? Honesty is hard. Living with the results of lying is even harder.

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Homicide statistics are driven by both economic and emotional factors. My suspicion: Universal Health care will lead to re-examination of drug laws, leading to decriminalization, removing profit motive from drug smuggling. How many homicides are related to warring drug gangs?

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How many related to people who feel that there is no hope, who feel no connection to their surrounding society? Ever talked to someone who watched their mother, father, or siblings die sick and poor in absolute squalor? That's how you build a sociopath--give them no sense that the world cares about them. How much developmental stilting is caused by inadequate prenatal or childhood care? A Universal Health care system would include psychological counseling--anger management, stress reduction. All of these things have positive effects on health, but also the ability to live with one another.

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Yes, I absolutely agree that inner-city violence is exacerbated by absent fathers and immature mothers, by the flight of responsible role-models to better environments, but also by a sense that there is no way out, no one who cares, that the society around them hates them and wants them dead. I see the evolution of culture as moving slowly and inexorably from tiny groups (families) to tribes, to villages and cities and nations and finally to a world grid. That our prison statistics are a symptom of a gigantic portion of the population feeling disenfranchised and as if there is no positive outlet of their energies...as well as disproportionate prison sentences for the poor and minority population, and related to an insane drug policy. I'd be willing to let teetotalers set social policy for both alcohol AND drugs before I'd trust people who drink set policy for those who prefer something else. It's just nuts.

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I would think that Universal Education (although not necessarily college...trade schools can work just fine for many people) and Universal Health care (with commercial riders available for those who want and can afford extraordinary benefits) are investments in the future of our country, our children, our world. And I think that they are cheap in comparison with the alternative...in the case of UHC, we currentlynseem to spend more to get less. Which means that the money is there...the question is how to shift that money from the private to a public system. Seems to me that the best bet is a public option, where people can voluntarily shift their current payments to a growing city, state, or Federal pool. The greater the service per dollar, the more people will enroll. Competition is a good thing, right? So let's see if the profit motive really makes for better health care. Seems to me that that's what Insurance companies are worried about: they've had a gigantic profit machine that is going to shrink, but not disappear. And they're fighting for their lives. I'm fighting for yours, and mine. And our children's.